


the five that was and the five that is

by Muftiday



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Coping, Grief, Guilt, Internal Monologue, Loss, Mourning, Other, Replacing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:24:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9787526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muftiday/pseuds/Muftiday
Summary: In retrospect, talking about his dead girlfriend to the new runner probably hadnt been the best idea he'd ever had.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in the works for literal years rip my ass  
> i only got to season 2 and i plan to restart listening to zr sometime pls be kind im just emotional about sam and fives relationship ok

In retrospect, talking about his dead girlfriend to the new runner probably hadn't been the best idea he'd ever had.  
Sams has had a lot of ideas, and a lot of them have been bad, but that one easily makes at least the top ten of the worst and most embarrassing ones. The words sort of trip and stumble over his tongue. Before he can reign them back in they're out there, and he's never been great at leaving a conversation half finished. He watches their shadow through a window, up high where the especially influential doctors probably worked, and as he finds himself telling them everything he sees their shadow stiffen. To be fair, he has just said that they're currently where Alice was before she died, so he understands how that would be a bit off putting. He does, really. He feels pretty bad about it, actually. He feels worse about continuing, reciting the words he's crammed into his head since he heard the screams over the headset and he'd sobbed so loud he couldn't hear them over his own voice. To the new runners credit, their shadow appears to recover quite quickly and swiftly leaves his line of sight to search for some other important looking files that might save their life.   
The lack of cameras in the hospital leaves him with not much else to do than ramble into his mic. The runner hasn't replied once since they crashed into Abel, which is probably due to a broken audio jack, but their actions show they're still listening and that's enough encouragement to keep him going. The whole 'you could be our new runner five' thing leaves him grimacing inwardly and he smacks his forehead onto his desk as discreetly as he can, because wow did he really just say that? Oh my god he did.   
Holy shit, no wonder Janine's always trying to steal his job, he's bloody terrible at this.   
He prays the low whine he lets out in self pity doesn't pick up on the mic. 

Despite what all of Abel township seems to have thought, yes, he does hear the gossip, he's slow but he's not deaf Jack, good god, he did not think Alice was alive.   
The whole thing about hearing your girlfriend getting eaten alive is that it gives a wonderful sense of closure.   
Seeing her pull ahead of the clump of undead shuffling towards Five, her sneaker laces frayed and torn and her skin peeling off where it hasn't been torn away completely, is not at all what he expected, nor what he wanted. The whole experience is a bit strange when he thinks back on it. He remembers seeing Alice, remembers registering it was her, but then he's suddenly separate from himself. His voice echoes through his head, something about it being her, something about running, but it's all vague and fuzzy like he's underwater. He almost feels Maxine's arms holding him reassuringly as he watches the snipers take aim, almost feels the fear and the anger rise in him, almost hears himself scream, beg for them not to kill her. He definitely sees the bullet rip through Alice's skull. And then he's back in his own head, and he can feel Maxine, he can see the snipers, and oh god, Five's reached the gates, they're running through and they have the box, they're here, they got there, they outran Alice, oh god, god, god, fuck, fuck. 

He doesn't look at Alice's body. He doesn't and he knows he probably should, but god, she deserved better and he really doesn't want his final image of her to be her dead for the second time. He's selfish, he knows, but he's running down the stairs and he's so tired of caring. So instead of caring, he heads to the crowd already crowding around the new runner, heads bobbing in awe and curiosity, no doubt reaching for whatever supplies they scrambled back with. He weaves his way through, ducking under arms and stepping around figures, and he sees the runner. 

The first thing he notices is that they do not look like Alice. They aren't dead. The second thing he notices is that they look very, very, very scared. They're pressed up against the gate, their knuckles stark white with how tightly they're gripping the box of files Maxine was obsessed about, and their eyes dart from person to person in a way that can only be described as a cornered animal. He can see the seconds ticking down until someone gets too close and they bolt, so he does the only thing he knows.  
He talks.  
The moment the words leave his mouth, they're whipping her eyes to him and the recognition they show at his voice is almost tangible in the air. Their hands slacken and their pupils dilate, and Sam suddenly relaxes with them because this is what he knows. This is what he does. At some point the crowd scatters and Maxine appears to flick through the files before disappearing into her lab, no doubt to engage in some medical study that Sam's bored just thinking about, and Janine's starting the standard interrogation for new arrivals. He heads back to his comm shack after Janine practically shoves him there, and he nearly looks back. It takes several deep breaths and blinked back tears to get him inside, but he does it. The door slides shut behind him with a barely audible click.   
And then Sam cries.

The air between him and the new five is tense, to say the least. He doesn't want it to be, he really doesn't. It's just that every time he says their number it almost feels like Alice's alive again and he's talking to her and she's okay. If he doesn't look at the cameras and doesn't think too hard about the silence in Five's mic he can keep himself suspended in the fantasy for a whole run. It's when Five runs through the gates that he's forced to see them, running and running and so not Alice, that the reality hits him and he has to turn off the mic so Five doesn't hear his sobs. Just seeing Five is painful, the backpack Alice used to have strapped on their back, stain from melted chocolate still smeared on the right pocket when Alice'd hid a Curly Wurly for him once, and the hastily taped headset Alice had found and been so proud of now on their head is all it takes to get the hollow gap in his chest to become a gaping hole.   
It's not fair; not to Five, not to him either. It's not like Five doesn't notice. Everyone notices. Maxine let him much more time off than she should have, pulling him aside and insisting he do so with uncharacteristic gentleness, and Sam doesn't miss the way the township treats him like he's one wrong word from bursting into tears. All of Abel seems to make it their personal mission to accommodate him, extra rations, extra blankets, anything they can scrounge up and spare. And it's not that Sam doesn't appreciate it, really, he does, he just feels guilty as well. It seems he's always the one that needs looking after. The one that's more of a liability. The weak one.   
God, Maxine would punch him for thinking like this.  
So he stops. He drags himself out of his self pity and forces himself in front of the mic. He runs exercises with the new Five. He even goes out with them a few times. He only talks about Alice some of the time (okay, maybe most of it, but to be fair Five isn't very responsive), and keeps his self depreciating thoughts to himself. And if his smile cracks at the corners, and his laugh falters; well. It's the thought that counts.

The new Five's had it rough, and to their credit, they've been handling it remarkably well.  
Sam knows it's not exactly easy to transition into a new settlement, even without Janine eyeing you like a hawk every second. It's not exactly a secret that Five's being judged, a new runner from a far away military base that's suspiciously conservative about their reasons for sending them in the first place doesn't exactly inspire faith. All of Abel steers clear, and anyone who doesn't is most likely threatening them, passively or outwardly.   
Sam still remembers the first run with Seven, and how Five had come back looking not unlike a spooked cat ready to bolt at any second for their life. Sam is sympathetic. Seven scared the shit out of him when he arrived too.   
It probably doesn't help that the Five position is so freshly open either. Everyone in Abel liked Alice, and even without the ordeal with the new Five and her zombie the transition was going to be rough. All anyone can see when they talk to Five is Alice, and it shows. And, sure, Sam's guilty of it too (more than anyone else actually), but he really is trying to make Five feel welcome. Although Five doesn't seem to be reassured, and Sam's fairly sure that the time he said Five was popular he heard them scoff over the radio, but he IS trying. He is.  
He is.

Of course he thought of Five as their own person. It wasn't like he was delusional. He missed Alice, sure, and maybe he projected her a bit (maybe a lot) onto Five, but he DID know they weren't Alice.  
It simply didn't sink in until the night their comm went quiet.   
One second he's screaming for Five to run, run, just run, thinking that this was a terrible idea in the first place and he never should have let Five go on his bloody run, God, he can't lose another one, not again, please, and the next there's nothing. Gunshots echo in his ear drums through headphones and the red 'Out of range' blinking on his screen is searing into his eyes. 

He doesn't know. None of them know. It's hour six when Janine tells him it might be time to sign off, but they don't KNOW. He's seen Five survive things he never thought possible, drive an infant through a horde of undead, outrun a sprinting zombie, dodge drooling corpses for a sports bra for God's sake, surviving this would be nothing for Five. Sure, there were a lot of them, and they had a lot of guns, but Five's one of the best runners Sam's ever seen and they just don't KNOW.   
It's that thought that keeps him at his mic, rambling into dead air about anything he can think of. His university classes, his family, anything to fill the silence. If he concentrates it's almost like nothing's wrong, he's just talking to Five on a regular run and Five's quiet but listening, he knows they're listening because they always are. He always knew.   
But now he doesn't. And it scares him. 

He's back on their first mission, rambling into a mic to dead air in desperate clinging to hope, just trying, trying, to get them back. He thinks about that mission, and how he talked about Alice and made a right mess of offering any kind of reassurance to them.   
He thinks about how they followed everything they said, dutifully turning their red dot to his words.   
He thinks about the instant recognition in their eyes when they arrived in Abel.   
He thinks about the way they relaxed, reassured by his mere presence.   
He thinks about how whenever Seven started antagonizing them it was Sam they turned to in panic, Sam they trusted.   
And he doesn't talk about Alice this time.  
He doesn't even think about Alice.  
All he thinks about is Five. Five, lost and stumbling through a forest, with nothing but a red light and Sam's voice. Five, shaky and staticky on camera, skirting around clusters of zombies. Five, limping and followed by a horde, but there, there and so alive, so, so, so ALIVE, and Sam is out of his seat, shouting, shouting for them to open the gates, heart pounding in his throat so hard he thinks he might vomit, but he doesn't care, he doesn't care because God, Five is there and ALIVE. He's flying down the stairs, tripping over wires and himself, flinging himself out of the radio shack and towards the gates where Five is, bloody and broken, but alive and looking at him and reaching for him and Sam takes them. He takes them. He takes them and he hugs them and he cries because they're his Five. Not Alice, or anyone else; his Five.   
"You're home Five..."

His Five.

"You're home."


End file.
